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Saturday, February 27, 2016

U.S. LAUNCHES ICBM, SECOND IN A WEEK, READY FOR WAR WITH CHINA OR RUSSIA

On Wednesday , the United states Strategic Missile Command launched it's
second Intercontinental Ballistic missile within a week. The unarmed
Minuteman 3 launched from its silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California, last night at 11:01pm Pacific time,February 25, 2016.The ICBM hit its
target four thousand two hundred miles away in the Marshall Islands. Of
the launch, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work told reporters that the
missile tests are intended to send a message to Russia, China and North
Korea.

Declaring we're ready to use nuclear weapons if
necessary he said quote, "We and the Russians and the Chinese routinely
do test shots to prove that the operational missiles that we have are
reliable. And that is a signal that we are prepared to use nuclear
weapons in defense of our country, if necessary."

The missile, which hit a
test range in the waters of the Kwajalein Atoll, some 2,500 miles
southwest of Honolulu, normally carries three independently targeted
warheads, each with 20 times the destructive power of the bombs that
killed as many as 350,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

For
Thursday’s flight, it carried a bundle of test instruments.

To
ensure that the political significance of the back-to-back launches
(there have been just 15 such tests since 2011) was lost on no one,
Robert Work, the US deputy secretary of defense, gave an interview on
Thursday specifically naming Russia and China and describing the test
firings as “a signal … that we are prepared to use nuclear weapons in
defense of our country if necessary.”

This highly unusual and
extremely provocative declaration of Washington’s readiness to wage a
nuclear war came amid rising tensions with China in the South China Sea
and Russia in both Syria and Eastern Europe. The nuclear threat has been
accompanied by brazen saber-rattling by top Pentagon officials
testifying before the US Congress in support of increased US arms
spending.This included testimony Wednesday before the House Armed Services
Committee from Admiral Harry Harris, head of the US Navy’s Pacific
Command, who called for a major escalation of US anti-Chinese naval
operations in the South China Sea and charged that Beijing is seeking
“hegemony in East Asia,” a strategic imperative that Washington itself
is determined to attain by military means.

Even more incendiary
were the remarks delivered to the same congressional panel Thursday by
Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and
chief of the US European Command. Breedlove described Russia as
“resurgent” and “aggressive,” charging that Moscow had “chosen to be an
adversary and poses a long-term existential threat” to the United
States.

“The US and NATO must take a 360-degree approach to
security—addressing the full spectrum of security challenges from any
direction and [ensuring] we are using all elements of our nation’s
power,” Breedlove said. In stressing “all elements” of US power, the Air
Force general was referring to the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal.

Breedlove
lashed out at Russia’s five-month-old intervention in Syria, which he
said had “wildly exacerbated the problem,” presumably by disrupting
Washington’s attempt to secure regime change through a war in which Al
Qaeda serves as America’s main proxy force on the ground.

He went so far
as to accuse Moscow of “weaponizing” the wave of migrants driven to
seek refuge in Europe by the US-orchestrated civil war in Syria and its
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“To counter Russia, Eucom [the US
European Command], working with allies and partners, is deterring Russia
now and preparing to fight and win if necessary,” Breedlove declared.
There is more than a whiff of madness in Breedlove’s remarks. For the
top US commander in Europe to talk openly of preparing to “fight and
win” against Russia smacks of an invitation to a nuclear holocaust.

Breedlove’s
remarks were supplemented by those of US Defense Secretary Ashton
Carter, who told the House Appropriations Committee that supposed
“nuclear saber-rattling” by Moscow had called into question the Russian
leadership’s “commitment to strategic stability” and “whether they
respect the profound caution that nuclear-age leaders showed with regard
to brandishing nuclear weapons.” As recent events have shown,
Washington itself shares no such commitment or caution.

With some
justification, Russia’s Defense Ministry linked this kind of bellicose
rhetoric to the debate over the US military budget, remarking that the
same “tide rises every year.” However, it would be a dangerous error to
underestimate the advanced preparations being made by Washington for
global war in general and for a military confrontation with Russia in
particular.

This year’s proposed Pentagon budget includes $3.4
billion for the European Reassurance Initiative, quadrupling last year’s
funding. A pair of think tanks that are intimately connected to the US
military and intelligence apparatus have issued back-to-back reports
supporting this buildup. The Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) issued a report earlier this month that was commissioned
by US Army Europe. It argued that “a dramatic shift in both the European
and transatlantic security paradigm requires a reevaluation of a full
range of measures required for the United States to best deter Russia
from similar acts of adventurism in and around alliance territory.”On
Friday, the Atlantic Council, a virtual arm of NATO, came out with a
report, entitled “Alliance at Risk: Strengthening European Defense,”
which argued for a major military buildup throughout Europe. Directed at
shaping the discussion at the NATO summit scheduled to be held in
Warsaw in July, it declares, “Strengthening European defense will
provide resources to help deter the threat from the East and prevail
over the dangers from the South.”Drafted by top political and
military figures, the report reviews the military status of Britain,
which it describes as “hollowed out,” as well as France, Germany,
Norway, Italy and Poland.The section on Germany decries the
“strong anti-militaristic streak” within the population and argues that
“political leaders and commentators need to persuade and educate the
public on the importance of a stronger defense posture.”

Most
chilling is the section on Poland, drafted by Tomasz Szatkowski, the
undersecretary of state in the Polish Ministry of National Defense, who
argues for Warsaw’s development of a “nonnuclear deterrence” against
Russia that would “consist of new capabilities, such as longer and more
powerful warheads on cruise missiles, new types of weaponry (e.g.,
microwave technology), and offensive cyber capabilities and subversive
oriented Special Operations Forces.”

Behind the scenes, without
anything being said to the people of the United States or the world, US
and NATO officials have been discussing changes in the Western nuclear
posture and rules of engagement on the pretext that Moscow has violated
the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), an allegation that
Russia has denied.

To prepare for aggressive nuclear war, the
Obama administration has developed a $1 trillion nuclear weapons
modernization program that envisions the deployment of new generations
of long-range bombers, nuclear submarines, ICBMs and cruise missiles
over the next 30 years.

In the fiscal year 2017 Pentagon budget now
under discussion, the administration has requested $9.2 billion for the
National Nuclear Security Administration, a division of the Department
of Energy, for the development of Washington’s stockpile of nuclear
warheads.AMERICA HAS ALSO DEPLOYED THADD MISSILES TO SOUTH KOREA.WATCH THE VIDEO AT THE WASHINGTON TIMES WEBSITE<HERE>"The talk of THAAD has also drawn the ire of Russia, where officials
say it would be an unnecessarily aggressive U.S. military move in North
Asia.Mr. Kerry has tread carefully on the issue, but defended the discussions given the threat from the North.“We
have made it very clear that we are not hungry or anxious or looking
for an opportunity to be able to deploy THAAD,” Mr. Kerry said.

But
he quickly added, “THAAD is a purely defensive mechanism. It’s not an
offensive weapon [and] doesn’t have offensive capability.”IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW, THE U.S. DEPLOYED ITS UPDATED NUCLEAR BOMB TO NATO ALLIES A YEAR AGO, OR MORE...http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/02/wrong-move-adding-nuclear-weapons-russia-ukraine-conflict/104940/For whatever deterrent value they may provide, the U.S. already has some 200 B-61 nuclear bombs
based in Europe, along with dual-capable aircraft to deliver them.
Deploying additional tactical nuclear weapons to Europe would escalate
tensions between NATO and Russia while providing no additional security to our allies or to U.S. forces deployed there.

As noted
by then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James
Cartwright, our tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe have no
uniquely military function that cannot be provided by our other nuclear
weapons.

Deploying additional U.S. tactical nuclear
weapons to Europe would make them more vulnerable to a Russian
preemptive attack, even with conventional weapons, in the event of an
escalating crisis.

Also, it is well-known that Russia possesses a far
larger stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons than the U.S. has in its inventory. Russia could be tempted to employ its tactical nuclear weapons superiority to take out the U.S. weapons deployed in Europe in the mistaken belief that it could confine the conflict to Western Europe. "

"If one searches press reports on US military presence in South Korea,
there is a varying figure of US troop strength ranging from around 22,000
to 30,000, calling into question how those numbers are arrived at given
the deployment of US troops to other parts of the world. "WHO CAN SAY WHERE OUR TROOPS ARE?LOOKS LIKE THE U.S. IS DETERMINED TO MAKE A VERY STUPID MOVE, FOLKS.PREPARE YOUR MINDS....